It’s no secret that 2012 has not been a banner year for Sony and one of the ways it wants to turn that around seems to be by taking on the used games market. A patent filed by SCE Japan describes a novel solution of associating a game copy with a single user account, not through the use of passcode authentication, but by putting an NFC chip on every game disc.
“When the game is to be played, the reproduction device conveys the disc ID and a player ID to the use permission tag,” according to Sony Japan’s patent document. “The use permission tag stores the terms of use of the game and determines whether a combination of the disc ID and the player ID conveyed from the reproduction device fulfills the terms of use or not.”
Via NeoGAF, Eurogamer
Source Patent